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Post by schmalzy on Jan 7, 2018 10:32:00 GMT -6
Hey, all!
So, I have a small-ish room (20’x14.5’x7.5’) that - after putting up a number of absorption panels - is a little dead sounding lacking “air” in sounds. I’d love to get a little life back in the room. But, slap echoes are a problem in my room if the wall is untreated. My thinking was “if the walls were angled the reflections would be less slapping and direct. So I’m going to angle the walls by building an angled wall in front of the actual drywall using plywood.
I’m thinking of taking 2 pieces of plywood and cutting it to be 7.5 feet tall and 8 inches deep. They’ll stand up vertically from floor to ceiling. Between them will be a couple 4 foot square pieces of plywood that will be attached to the 7.5’x8” uprights to act as the new wall surface. The new wall surface will be angled something like 10 degrees upwards. I’m hoping that will allow me to keep more reflections in the room without bouncing them back at such a flat angle that they start to sound problematic.
Here’s a quick drawing I did so you could see it. I’m posting from mobile so I put the photo on Twitter:
I’m also considering attaching some angled pieces of wood (mostly odd-sized scraps) onto the angled wall surfaces to break up and randomize the reflections even more.
Does this thing make sense?
How would that effect the sound in the room?
Any thoughts, concerns, insights, or advice regarding the project?
Thanks!
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Post by drbill on Jan 7, 2018 10:51:49 GMT -6
For some, experimentation is a joy, and half the fun.
For others, getting it right the first time is worth its weight in gold.
I fall in the second camp. I've got to work, and experiments are not for me.
I'd suggest Jeff Hedback who will get you up and going quickly, cheaply, efficiently and at a very fair price.
That's my $0.02.
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Post by schmalzy on Jan 7, 2018 12:35:40 GMT -6
For some, experimentation is a joy, and half the fun. For others, getting it right the first time is worth its weight in gold. I fall in the second camp. I've got to work, and experiments are not for me. I'd suggest Jeff Hedback who will get you up and going quickly, cheaply, efficiently and at a very fair price. That's my $0.02. In the future, I’m definitely going to hire someone like Jeff. The knowledge and understanding those guys have is incredible beyond what I can comprehend. This current space is not permanent, though, so I’m trying to get as far as I can without that - plus the cost of just getting him to North Dakota and home is more than what I’ve spent in total on the mostly adequate treatment in my room. As of now, I’m not sooo booked that it doesn’t make sense to DIY it and observe results. Any ideas/comments/concerns regarding this current idea?
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 7, 2018 12:44:26 GMT -6
Hey, all! So, I have a small-ish room (20’x14.5’x7.5’) that - after putting up a number of absorption panels - is a little dead sounding lacking “air” in sounds. I’d love to get a little life back in the room. But, slap echoes are a problem in my room if the wall is untreated. My thinking was “if the walls were angled the reflections would be less slapping and direct. So I’m going to angle the walls by building an angled wall in front of the actual drywall using plywood. I’m thinking of taking 2 pieces of plywood and cutting it to be 7.5 feet tall and 8 inches deep. They’ll stand up vertically from floor to ceiling. Between them will be a couple 4 foot square pieces of plywood that will be attached to the 7.5’x8” uprights to act as the new wall surface. The new wall surface will be angled something like 10 degrees upwards. I’m hoping that will allow me to keep more reflections in the room without bouncing them back at such a flat angle that they start to sound problematic. Here’s a quick drawing I did so you could see it. I’m posting from mobile so I put the photo on Twitter: I’m also considering attaching some angled pieces of wood (mostly odd-sized scraps) onto the angled wall surfaces to break up and randomize the reflections even more. Does this thing make sense? How would that effect the sound in the room? Any thoughts, concerns, insights, or advice regarding the project? Thanks! Rather than putting up angled flat panels of plywood, which merely redirect the reflections while allowing them to remain coherent (some of the worst fluitter echoes I've ever heard have been in small rooms and hallways with flat, angled ceiling/wall panels) I would construct some "skyline style" diffusor panels, which will break up the reflections and direct them in quasi-random directions.
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Post by kcatthedog on Jan 7, 2018 12:49:49 GMT -6
Ya, I’m with John why put that labour and cost into a non permanent space?
your basic dimensions are relatively good
Building or buying some diffusers would be an ongoing tool you could take with you ?
If you built 4 2x4 diffusers and put 2 beside your listening position and two centred on back wall and played with the space your monitors are from the front wall and their angle in towards you bet you would solve a large part of your too dead, flutter echo, cancellation problems ?
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Post by drbill on Jan 7, 2018 13:36:41 GMT -6
For some, experimentation is a joy, and half the fun. For others, getting it right the first time is worth its weight in gold. I fall in the second camp. I've got to work, and experiments are not for me. I'd suggest Jeff Hedback who will get you up and going quickly, cheaply, efficiently and at a very fair price. That's my $0.02. In the future, I’m definitely going to hire someone like Jeff. The knowledge and understanding those guys have is incredible beyond what I can comprehend. This current space is not permanent, though, so I’m trying to get as far as I can without that - plus the cost of just getting him to North Dakota and home is more than what I’ve spent in total on the mostly adequate treatment in my room. As of now, I’m not sooo booked that it doesn’t make sense to DIY it and observe results. Any ideas/comments/concerns regarding this current idea? First, Jeff works remotely only. Even when he was working for Trevor Horn and/or other famous producers, he does what he does with his knowledge or rooms, test tones, and his computers from his office. So there is no need to get him to ND. Second, he is quite reasonable. Reasonable enough that he ended up SAVING me substantial money over what it would have cost me if I had tried to do it DIY. That's my perspective. My time is valuable too, and there's just none of it to waste. No disrespect to those trying to help, but I can't take random internet advice on a room I need WORKING asap - even if it's temporary. Life is short. Either live with it, or get it right (even if right is a compromise situation). Jeff could give you ideas about temporary fixes that would WORK, even though not being permanent in a hour's consultation. Just sayin'. There's also lots of other guys, although I liked and chose him because of exactly your situation - dealing with imperfect situations and making them work as good as possible - inexpensively.
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Post by matt@IAA on Jan 7, 2018 13:51:18 GMT -6
+1 for Jeff. His rates are reasonable and he seems like an all-around great guy.
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Post by donr on Jan 7, 2018 14:01:47 GMT -6
I'll second drbill on Jeff Hedbeck. I hired Jeff based on Bill's recommendation and have been really happy with the result. Jeff isn't expensive and his fee was a small part of the total cost of treatment, which for me wound up about $2500, discounting my labor. I built in the 703 on the walls, but I could have made them like gobos and hangable. The rest of the pieces (like tuned membrane bass traps, I've got 8 of them) were stock GIK items you can take with you when you leave.
I never would have anticipated Jeff's design, it doesn't look much like any of the prefab packages from the acoustic companies. There's a lot of 703 on my walls, but the room doesn't sound dead or claustrophobic. My space is similar to yours, 23'x13.5'x7.5'
My floor is vinyl tile over concrete, with a couple of area rugs. I consider myself lucky there. Drywall elsewhere and pegboard. Most of the pegboard is covered with 703 and Guilford fabric.
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Post by mdmitch2 on Jan 7, 2018 14:02:53 GMT -6
Maybe I missed it, but what's your flooring? If you have wall to wall carpet, it might be hard to avoid the overly dead sound.
I've been working in a room that's approx 23'x 13'x 8', and I did 703' ceiling clouds on both sides as well as most of the ceiling/wall intersections. Treating the the ceiling/wall and corner intersections completely killed the slap for me. Beyond that, I have rugs that cover about 60% of the square footage, and the rear wall and the 23' long walls treated with a few 4'x 2' panels of 4" 703. The panels are spread out every couple feet, so maybe 40-50% of the walls and ceilings are covered. The room sounds fantastic btw.... everyone comments on how good it sounds, even compared to a lot fancier studios they've worked in. So it's definitely doable, and you don't need to go overboard with treatment.... I had some help setting it up from GIK acoustics... I bought a few panels from them, and they offered a good bit of free design advice. Bryan Pape was the guy who helped me.
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Post by mrholmes on Jan 7, 2018 14:33:16 GMT -6
For some, experimentation is a joy, and half the fun. For others, getting it right the first time is worth its weight in gold. I fall in the second camp. I've got to work, and experiments are not for me. I'd suggest Jeff Hedback who will get you up and going quickly, cheaply, efficiently and at a very fair price. That's my $0.02. Just to tell another story I had profoessional acoustic designers too, but in the end doing it wrong - all bymyself - turned out to be the right way for this room. When I showed them my meassurments they did not belived it, they came back and measuerd and where very surprissed by the simple approach from the 70s "make it dead if nothing else works right". I made it dead and bang the low end and the rest was ø 200 ms. It always depends on the room. Textbook right can be wrong in realty. And there never can be too much base trappping in small places.
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Post by schmalzy on Jan 7, 2018 14:34:28 GMT -6
I didn’t realize Jeff worked remotely...interesting!
Flooring? Right now it’s cement with some thin carpet in the middle - 50% coverage. Just enough to take the chill off feet. The wife and I will be going to a vinyl flooring as soon as our guy gets the time.
Everything in the room is to hopefully be reuseable. These angled wall things are intended to be free-standing. All of my panels (besides the clouds) are free-standing and filled with Saf N Sound.
GIK 442 traps overhead the mix position. 6” thick 4’x4’ at the mixing first reflection points and at the back of the room begin the mix position. Eight 3” thick 6’x2’ panels strategically placed depending on mixing or tracking. One 4” thick 6’x 7.5’ish cloud in the middle of the tracking area. 6” thick 6’x1.5’ bass traps in the vertical corners.
Lots of absorption. Honestly fairly decent low end control - not huge swings. No air in drum overheads. No air in acoustic guitars. No air in in tambourines. No air in shakers. Kicks, snares, toms, amps all sound tight and in-your-face.
I’m hoping to build one or two of these free-standing reflectors walls in the room to strategically place when recording whatever might need some air. I’m hoping that by breaking up the reflections in a pretty cheap, DIY-able, and moveable fashion I can bring some air back into my tracking.
If buying a pre-made diffusor is better, then I’ll definitely go that route. I like being able to move stuff around to change the sound in my room depending on the source needs. I’ll have to scheme up a way to make those diffusors free-standing.
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Post by drbill on Jan 7, 2018 14:38:00 GMT -6
BTW - not to beat a dead horse, but Jeff conceptually supports DIY with specific techniques and also with hands on experience. OK. I'll stop now....
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Post by bradd on Jan 7, 2018 14:54:24 GMT -6
I would also recommend Jeff Hedback. He worked wonders with my room and was very reasonable.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Jan 7, 2018 15:10:01 GMT -6
The oldest trick in the world is masonite pegboard over the absorption. Bookshelves work great. Once you get some diffusion happening, you'll probably want to remove some of the absorption.
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Post by kcatthedog on Jan 7, 2018 20:04:51 GMT -6
Bob stock peg board pattern?
do peeps paint pegboard to make it more reflective ?
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Post by kcatthedog on Jan 7, 2018 20:06:22 GMT -6
I was up on Jeff’s site a while back guess I misunderstood but I didn’t get the impression it would be lower cost ? Glad to hear I got that wrong
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Jan 7, 2018 20:23:38 GMT -6
Bob stock peg board pattern? do peeps paint pegboard to make it more reflective ? I doubt that painting makes much of a difference.
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Post by nnajar on Jan 7, 2018 21:24:32 GMT -6
The oldest trick in the world is masonite pegboard over the absorption. Bookshelves work great. Once you get some diffusion happening, you'll probably want to remove some of the absorption. In my drum room I have 4x8 free standing “flats” in the entire room. They’re filled with Roxul AFB, one side is covered in fabric, the other side is 1/4” hole Masonite pegboard. They’re fantastic because you can spin them around and either have lots of absorption or some mid/high reflection and still have low absorption. They’re simple and quick to build and surprisingly versatile depending on what type of sound you want.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 14,967
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Post by ericn on Jan 7, 2018 21:38:03 GMT -6
I am not in anyway against Bob or anybody's DIY ideas but for the little Jeff charges for his service it's just silly to not give him a call and decide if this is for you! He isn't trying to sell you any specific product, he's trying to help you get the most out of your specific room based on his experience and math!
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Post by donr on Jan 7, 2018 22:01:01 GMT -6
In my case the absorption is over the pegboard/standard insulation/exterior wall. Jeff calculated the effect of all the elements. The big pegboard area already made the room less problematic than an all drywall room would have.
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Post by matt@IAA on Jan 7, 2018 22:38:04 GMT -6
I recently decided on Jeff to do the acoustics on a new studio addition...seeing all of these positive reviews on here is really making me feel pretty good about that decision.
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 7, 2018 22:46:50 GMT -6
For some, experimentation is a joy, and half the fun. For others, getting it right the first time is worth its weight in gold. I fall in the second camp. I've got to work, and experiments are not for me. I'd suggest Jeff Hedback who will get you up and going quickly, cheaply, efficiently and at a very fair price. That's my $0.02. Just to tell another story I had profoessional acoustic designers too, but in the end doing it wrong - all bymyself - turned out to be the right way for this room. When I showed them my meassurments they did not belived it, they came back and measuerd and where very surprissed by the simple approach from the 70s "make it dead if nothing else works right". I made it dead and bang the low end and the rest was ø 200 ms. It always depends on the room. Textbook right can be wrong in realty. And there never can be too much base trappping in small places.
With the undertstanding that conventional bass trapping needs thickness to be effective at low frequencies. Typical absorptive traps need to be a minimum of 2' deep and 4' is needed to really go low. That makes them difficult to implement properly in small spaces. I personally dislike a dead sounding room. You wind up having to jump through a lot of hoops (I'm too old and fat for that) to compensate for lost ambience with artificial reverbs, etc. Whenever I'm forced to relocate, the first thing I do is walk around clapping my hands and listening. If a room doesn't sound at least reasonably right I won't rent there.
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 7, 2018 23:08:53 GMT -6
I didn’t realize Jeff worked remotely...interesting! Flooring? Right now it’s cement with some thin carpet in the middle - 50% coverage. Just enough to take the chill off feet. The wife and I will be going to a vinyl flooring as soon as our guy gets the time. Everything in the room is to hopefully be reuseable. These angled wall things are intended to be free-standing. All of my panels (besides the clouds) are free-standing and filled with Saf N Sound. GIK 442 traps overhead the mix position. 6” thick 4’x4’ at the mixing first reflection points and at the back of the room begin the mix position. Eight 3” thick 6’x2’ panels strategically placed depending on mixing or tracking. One 4” thick 6’x 7.5’ish cloud in the middle of the tracking area. 6” thick 6’x1.5’ bass traps in the vertical corners. Lots of absorption. Honestly fairly decent low end control - not huge swings. No air in drum overheads. No air in acoustic guitars. No air in in tambourines. No air in shakers. Kicks, snares, toms, amps all sound tight and in-your-face. I’m hoping to build one or two of these free-standing reflectors walls in the room to strategically place when recording whatever might need some air. I’m hoping that by breaking up the reflections in a pretty cheap, DIY-able, and moveable fashion I can bring some air back into my tracking. If buying a pre-made diffusor is better, then I’ll definitely go that route. I like being able to move stuff around to change the sound in my room depending on the source needs. I’ll have to scheme up a way to make those diffusors free-standing. It's just as easy to make the diffusors free- standing as your angled panels - but probably not as necessary. Again, I think the angled panels are a really bad idea - they won't do what you hope for and likely will cause as many or more problems as they solve.
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Post by Vincent R. on Jan 7, 2018 23:24:14 GMT -6
Interesting convo. Been having a similar issue. I started moving panels around and got that ring again. I actually find my room is bright. Thanks for the recommendation of Jeff Hedbeck, maybe down the road.
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Post by javamad on Jan 8, 2018 3:57:52 GMT -6
+1 on doubting the angled panels solution.
Have you measured the room response as it is now? Are you sure that deadness is the only issue you have? You don’t want to start changing the top end feel of your room until the low end is right because low end solutions normally take up more space and then you put the top end reflectors/diffusors in front of that.
Btw ... a simple 2 meter squarrd wood floor section under your mix position could help (and protect the carpet from chair wheels)
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